


Now Breaks the Day

by Anonymous



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Fix-It, Forgiveness, Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 21:05:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17231180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: An alternate take on how the final confrontation between Horus and the Emperor on the Vengeful Spirit could have gone down.  Last minute to midnight fix-it fic.





	Now Breaks the Day

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the following quote:
> 
> "Each one of the Ten Thousand represents genetic lore acquired over many lifetimes. Each one of you is unique, a work of art never to be repeated. I am miserly with your lives, where I would spend so many others without a thought."

Miserly. Now there was a word few would use to describe him. Fewer among that number would say so to his face. But Malcador, his dearest oldest friend and his right hand, he had used it, and used it correctly, as all his pronounced judgments had been. Thinking of Malcador now brought forth a deluge of sorrow. Already, the man the Emperor remembered did not exist and regardless of what came at the end, there would be no trace that he had existed when he returned to the Throne.

Malcador had called him miserly for his judicious use of the Custodian Guard. Though they were not made to be warriors in the same way as Astartes, they could fight just as well, and still, the Emperor kept them jealously close. The Sigillite was not wrong, but what he had not verbalised — likely because the Custodians were ever in-earshot of the Emperor — was that their lives would still be traded hand over fist for other, even rarer occurrences. Malcador was one of them; the Emperor would have linked all ten thousand to his Throne, had it meant that the Sigillite's life might be spared. But Malcador had more psychic energy in one hand than the ten thousand combined and no one but Magnus could have taken his place.

His sons were another. They were twenty lives in a sea of trillions and he had already ordered the deaths of two of them. It was necessary, he knew, but it did not stem the hurt. Malcador had pursed his lips and looked away, refusing to give comment when the decision was made. The Emperor knew — if one might be erased, then another, then another. What was one became two and now there were more sons against his vision of a united mankind than for. The most angelic of them lay in a crumpled heap, his wings broken, his armour stained with blood. It was as if he had been plucked from the sky and crushed in the fist of some uncaring god. This was a loyal son, a son who had risked life and limb to cross a dozen star systems to defend his palace. And now he, like Malcador, was no more.

And there would still be more hurt to come.

The Emperor had lived tens of thousands of years, having existed long before his current corporal form. He had his share of sorrow and tragedies and felt the grief and bereavement and disappointment of hundreds of lifetimes. None could compare to the present, where it was him and his most favoured son — his first-found, his closest, his one and only for decades, the eye of his Empire and the one who had executed his will for centuries — with the corpses of those dear scattered between them. There was Sanguinius, Helios, Amon, Justinian, and — close enough to have clashed with the Warmaster — Constantin himself.

Horus watched, alert as always, and for a moment it was as if they were back in the halls of the Imperial Palace. His eyes had shone so, when the Emperor demonstrated how to skip a stone across the face of the largest pond in the garden, and it had been their special sport, a silly little activity to retire to after a day's strife and struggle. Horus had lived for less than three hundred years. Less than a hundredth of his father's existence. But there had been no one closer, no one dearer, no one he had held in greater confidence, no one whose judgment equalled — and at times exceeded — his own. And that, that gulf between how things should have been and how they actually panned out, was what pained him the most.

"He should have waited for you," Horus remarked, as impatient as he had always been. He stood, on the same elevated dais as his throne, and the Emperor drew his gaze to him.

"Do you mean your brother or your tutor?"

Horus shrugged, causing his pauldrons to grind up against his chestplate. "Both of them, I suppose."

The Emperor remained at the entrance of the court. At last, when he could bear the anticipation no longer, he looked up. When he had last been on his son's ship, a larger-than-life portrait of the two of them fighting back-to-back against the greenskins on Gorro had been painted, stretching from one end of the chamber to the next. There was no trace of the composition now and in its place were grizzled talons and bloodied rags, a nesting site for Warp creatures. When the Emperor looked to Horus again, he found him frowning, though he too, had not moved from his place.

"Will you not join me, Father?" he asked, extending his taloned hand with all the earnestness of a boy, "I will lift you to higher glories. Were it to the two of us, together once more, the galaxy itself would pose no challenge."

It was this offer, paired with the gesture and expression that was uniquely Horus', that told the Emperor this was _Horus_ , that this was truly his son and no apparition of the Warp. And still, before him now, the boy he had raised into adulthood was an enemy in every sense.

He shook his head with genuine regret before unsheathing his sword and crossing the length of the court in a step. Horus met him, mace against blade, and they fought, swing for swing and step for step.

It was as if they were in the sparring fields of the palace, with the Custodian Guard cheering them on from the corners. But this was no spar. There would be no pulling the other up, no friendly gestures or kind words in the aftermath. They would not stroll shoulder-to-shoulder under the overdecorated golden archways in companionable silence, waiting with baited breath for the next emergency.

But as he still could not hate the other, not even as Worldbreaker was swung with enough force to shatter the windows, at an intensity which made the Emperor clench his teeth, he thought of all the lives that had been lost in his son's foolish venture. The billions of humans, the hundreds of thousands of Astartes, the nine in ten of his Custodian Guard. He thought of Ferrus, of Sanguinius, of Constantin and Helios and Amon and Justinian. He thought of Malcador. And from the memory of them, at least, he could muster enough energy to complete his own swing, sending Horus staggering back, bleeding from the deepened cut in his armour.

The so-called Gods of the Warp had indeed given Horus their blessings. The key difference being: Horus was robbing from an already-looted supply. There were no gods, the Emperor was as certain then as he had been certain before, for there were _no_ omnipotent beings. Even amassed together, the four warlords of the Warp could not best him and, were he the God Lorgar believed him to be, his favourite son would not have turned at all.

The fight was over in a matter of minutes, with Horus disabled and keeled back against his throne. The Emperor could feel the gazes of the False Gods growing distant as the champion they had rallied about fell, but it did not matter.

He sheathed his sword and walked over to his son. Horus was bleeding from the mouth, there was an unsightly wound from his chest as well. Worldbreaker lay about him, smashed to pieces, and the claws of his Talon were bent out of shape. He laughed as the Emperor approached and it was not the sound of a madman but the false bravado of a child. To hear it made the Emperor's heart ache.

"You must kill me now, Father," he said in an equally small voice. "Kill me, or they will surely use me a second time."

The Emperor made to reach for his sword, and then, at the last second, about-faced and grabbed at his son's ear, twisting it hard.

Horus gave a yelp of pain.

"What!" he started, coughing up blood, but the Emperor silenced him with a glance.

"I have enough to grieve for," the Emperor said, releasing his son's ear. "And don't think for a moment I believe you possessed — then or now. You are my son, Horus Lupercal, and you can be no more turned by the Warp than I!" And then, before Horus could gather himself or more likely, protest, he raised both hands and closed his eyes, healing the other with a thought. Horus' eyes widened, in amazement and disbelief, and he looked down at his chest, the flesh still visible from the cut in his armour but otherwise whole and unsullied, and touched at the corners of his mouth.

"Would that I could," the Emperor murmured, "But there is not power enough in this world to bring back the dead." He opened his arms then, embracing Horus, and felt his son stiffen and splutter, as startled and embarrassed as he had been in childhood.

"Father — " he began, almost snarling. He made a weak attempt to push him away, but the Emperor held him close.

"Shhh, my son," the Emperor murmured, leaning forward so that his chin rested against Horus' brow. "I was the one who cast the first stone. When you fell on Davin, I should have gone to you immediately. You are my Warmaster, my Eye, my foremost son, and I should not have left you to the care of lesser doctors."

Horus took a sharp breath as his whole being tensed. He stood motionless, trapped in his father's embrace for what felt like an eternity. Then the weight of the Emperor's words fell against him in the silence and he trembled and crumpled, wrapping his arms about his father and weeping like a child.

Being in such close proximity to Horus meant that the Emperor could, at last, sift through his memories and see the events as they had unfolded since Ullanor. In truth, they were still one and the same: just as Horus was unable to show favoritism to his brothers and his men, so too was the Emperor unable to help his sons — the Warmaster foremost among them — without entangling himself in the viper's pit that was the Terran High Lord bureaucracy. For centuries they had begrudged him sons at all and it was only with the reassurance that the Primarchs would be stripped of most ranks and privileges at the end of the Great Crusade, that they had kept from rebelling at all. What they did not know was that the Emperor had been planning to remove the authority of the High Lords as well, at the same time.

"Father — " Horus said.

"I know."

"But I feared — "

"I know."

"And I was wrong — "

"I know."

"No!" Horus let go of him and pushed him away and this time, the Emperor went. "You do not know! You cannot hope to understand! It was as you said," he confessed, tears running down his cheeks, "I did not need to be seduced nor swayed, I turned on you of my own accord! I thought to use the Warp to best you. I — " and here he shuddered, bracing himself against the throne at the weight of his own misdeeds, "— I aimed to sit on your throne, to rule as you had. I am guilty, Father, I am guilty a thousand times over. You cannot spare me, you cannot."

"I can and I will," the Emperor replied.

"Then I will carry out your justice myself!" Horus declared, brandishing his own laspistol and craning his wrist so that the muzzle was pointed at his temple.

"There would be no justice in your death!" the Emperor shouted back, stepping forward and yanking the gun from Horus' hand. Horus had already pulled the trigger, but even the laspistol was too slow; the concentrated energy missed its target by meters, stopping altogether as the Emperor threw it to the floor.

"How can you spare me when I've killed so many?!" Horus demanded, gesturing to the fallen. His face turned ashen when he glanced on the Angel's crumpled body, hit once more with the reality of having murdered his dearest brother.

"I have already lost so many sons," the Emperor answered, "I will not lose you."

Horus sank to his hands and knees, balling his fists against the hem of the Emperor's robe. He wept, and as he wept, the Emperor kneeled down so that he could once more be at level with his son.

"Horus," he started, "Do you remember how things were, when I first found you?"

Horus paused in his weeping but did not look up. The Emperor placed a hand on his shoulder, continuing with, "The Imperium of Man was in its fledgling stages. We could hardly assert domain over the Sol System, to say nothing of the rest of the galaxy."

His son shuddered, taking a deep breath as he began his own recollection. He nodded, still hiding his face. "I remember," he admitted, though his words were muffled, "But why speak of those days? They're long gone."

"Your brothers will not remember. I don't expect them to. But you, you were there. And were it not for you, we would not have conquered Sol, we would not have found your brothers, and the Imperium as we know it would be something else altogether."

"But that's — " Horus protested, at last looking up.

"No," the Emperor raised a hand, forestalling his son's argument, "Do not belittle your own efforts, Horus. It is not becoming. You and I, we made the Imperium into its current state. You may have broken a good half of it, and taken three brothers down with you, but I need you now, more than ever." And then he took Horus' face in his hands, looking upon him with the same earnest expression as he had at their first meeting on Cthonia. "Will you pledge yourself to me once more, my son? Will you swear to build it anew, into a creation your fallen brothers may be proud of?"

Horus closed his eyes, leaning in to the Emperor.

"Yes, Father," he swore, even as the tears continued to fall, "I swear it."

The Emperor smiled and kissed his brow as Horus flushed, feeling too old and too far removed for the gesture. "Then it will be as you said, my son," the Emperor told him, "For when the two of us are fighting on the same side, the galaxy itself will pose no challenge."


End file.
